Presiding at a civil wedding is a discretionary function of
the magistrate’s office, not a mandatory duty. Neely had an unqualified right
to decline a request to preside at a wedding, for any reason that suited her.

Prior to December 2014, she had never performed a same-sex
wedding ceremony, because they were not recognized by the State of Wyoming. Shortly before Christmas that year, Neely
was interviewed by a newspaper reporter named Ned Donovan, who asked her if
she was “excited” to begin officiating at same-sex wedding ceremonies.

A few weeks earlier, the US District Court in Wyoming had issued a ruling prohibiting
state officials “from enforcing or applying” Wyoming’s existing marriage
statute. Neely had made formal inquiries about how this would affect her
responsibilities, and had been counseled to refrain from public comment on the
matter until official guidance was given.

In dealing with Donovan, Neely acted in good faith, not
aware that the reporter with whom she was speaking was actually playing the
role of pursuivant
– a heretic hunter working on behalf of the state and its allied “tolerance”
industry. She explained that “When law and religion conflict, choices have to
be made. I have not yet been asked to perform a same sex marriage.”

"Journalist" as pursuivant: Donovan.

After speaking with Neely, Donovan called Pinedale Mayor Bob
Jones, who
informed him that as a municipal judge, Neely had no authority to perform weddings
– which obviously would mean that she had no legal responsibility to do so,
either.

Determined to shoehorn what he was told into a pre-conceived story, Donovan
called Neely again and engaged in a species of blackmail: If she would “state a
willingness to perform same-sex marriages,” he told the judge, he would refrain
from publishing a story about her. Neely told Donovan that she had no further
comment and ended the conversation.

In his initial story, Donovan claimed that “All judges are
required to marry those who meet the legal requirements, unless there is a
scheduling conflict or some other problem. In those cases, prospective couples
will be referred to other magistrates.” Nothing in Wyoming law dictates that a
magistrate must perform a marriage
ceremony for anybody.

The US District Court’s ruling
striking down Wyoming’s ban on same-sex marriage did not alter the provision of
Wyoming law recognizing that judges “may perform
the ceremony of marriage”; accordingly, Neely would have been within her legal
rights to say candidly that she would decline to perform same-sex marriage
ceremonies.

Neely was suspended from her position and informed that an “Investigatory
Panel” would inquire into allegations that she had committed offenses meriting
removal from the bench.

Last August, following the most perfunctory imaginable
inquiry, the CJCE ruled that Neely, by answering a hypothetical question in a
fashion fully in harmony with the existing laws, and expressing a point of view
the Supreme Court described as “decent and honorable” regarding a highly
contentious social policy, had violated the state’s code of judicial conduct.

“A judge announcing her decision to pick and choose the law
she wishes to follow undermines her position and our system of justice,”
announced the CJCE, without substantiating that charge in any way. It is impossible, after all, to substantiate a
lie: Nothing Neely said can honestly be construed as “announcing” her intent to
ignore the law, and – as previously noted -- the law as it exists in current
statutes did not require Neely to perform
any marriage ceremony.

It it also worth pointing out that after Neely was suspended, several gay and lesbian residents of Pinedale wrote affidavits describing her as a fair-minded and honorable public official. This availed her nothing, as far as the CJCE was concerned.

In its ruling, the CJCE sneers that Neely’s sincerely held
beliefs regarding marriage are the kind of opinions that should be confined to “churches”
and “coffee shops.” Not that we should assume that those private settings would
be spared future legal scrutiny: Recall that the section of the Wyoming State
code specifying that magistrates “may perform the ceremony of marriage in this
state” also applies to “every licensed or ordained minister of the gospel,
bishop, priest, or rabbi … [who] may perform the ceremony of marriage in this
state….”

In an
amicus brief filed on Neely’s behalf before the Wyoming State Supreme
Court, attorney Doug Mason underscores the fact that the CJCE, which has no
legislative authority, has effectively re-written the existing law to say that
the listed officials who “may” perform weddings, henceforth shall perform them. This imperative,
however, is not of general application: It apparently applies only to same-sex
ceremonies. Magistrates would still be at liberty not to officiate a ceremonies
for people who don’t belong to that specially protected class.

Mason points out that “there are no penalties for
non-judicial celebrants who refuse to participate in certain weddings, e.g. a
Catholic priest who declines to wed a Muslim couple, or a Catholic priest who
[declines] to marry a gay couple. In each case, the Catholic priest is
exercising the power of the state – the power to solemnize a wedding – but the
law imposes no such restrictions on those official acts.”

The missing word in this otherwise correct observation is: “Yet.”

“Many religious traditions refuse to solemnize or bless same-sex
relationships,” Mason
continues, referring to the teachings of the Catholic and LDS churches,
various Protestant denominations, as well as “Islamic Law [and] Orthodox
Judaism.”

“The Commission is really saying that no judge who belongs
to any of these religions is allowed to be a Wyoming judge,” Mason observes. The
Commission is “creating a religious test for public office: no individual can
remain a state judge if he or she believes that marriage is a joining of man
and woman, a view, by the way, that four justices of the US Supreme Court
embraced. Three of them are still on the Court and US Supreme Court justices
can perform wedding ceremonies. Is the State of Wyoming stating that these
three Justices should be impeached because they will not perform a gay wedding?”

There’s no reason to doubt that Commissarina Soto and her
fellow Leninists believe that this would be an appropriate course of action.
However, the “legal” principle the Commission pretends to have discovered is
even more expansive: The standard demanded by the CJCE would of necessity
encompass an ideological test for religious officials who are authorized to
perform marriage ceremonies.

Ruth Neely, unlike Kim Davis, was not actively impeding the
issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She was not declining
to bake
wedding cakes, or do floral arrangements, or act as a wedding
photographer for same-sex wedding ceremonies – all of which are exercises
of property rights that our rulers now consider to be unlawful. Her only overt “act” was to express her
religious convictions and correctly observe that they are in tension with what
the Judicial Branch now wants us to pretend is the “law.”

In doing so, she violated what the Lavender Leninists have
styled the “right” to “affirmation” of same-sex unions – in the
words of the California Supreme Court, “the right of [same-sex] couples to
have their family relationship accorded respect and dignity equal to that
accorded the family relationship of opposite-sex couples.”

Progressive heretic-hunters would probably prefer drone strikes.

Nobody can legitimately claim a property right to “approval,”
“respect,” or “affirmation” from another. In a genuinely free society,
marriages of all kinds would be private relationships solemnized through
covenants, or formalized through contracts, by parties acting on the “choice of
law” principle.

A non-statist marriage ceremony would be an invitation to
the community to recognize and affirm the union. Separation of marriage and
state is what people who understand individual liberty should pursue. The
community can invite recognition of a
union, but the Lavender Leninists are seeking to compel it – and doing so requires the coercive power of the state.

At the time of the Stonewall uprising, and for years after, the refrain of the gay rights movement was: Keep the police out of our private behavior. In its late-Leninist phase, the movement now demands that the state use its police power to punish those who withhold their approval of that private behavior.

“Dissenting individuals and culture-forming institutions
would … be forced to make a Hobson’s choice – either provide symbolic
affirmation of same-sex relationships or accept fines, penalties, or exclusion
from full participation in the civic life of the community.”

What a victory! The same state that will plunder, regiment, abuse, conscript, and perhaps even kill "transgendered" young people has affirmed their "right" to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity -- this week's Freedom Zealot Podcast:

Frankly government marriage is in it's own box and has nothing to do with God. People need to get married in their church and have the woman do a legal name change, taking her new husdand's last name. Cut government out of marriage altogether unless some people are happy with the state's Godless marriage. Frankly a judge could be a hard core devil worshiper performing the wedding. State marriage is a joke.